INTRODUCTION
I am honoured to welcome on behalf of Her Majesty's Government the distinguished delegates to the 28th Annual Session of the North Atlantic Assembly. This is the first time that you have met in London since 1974 and I extend my warm greetings to you all.
Your discussions will have special significance. You meet at a time when the changes in the leadership of the Soviet Union introduce a period of uncertainty. In the months ahead we shall judge whether Soviet policies and performance present new opportunities for peace or new dangers to stability. [end p1] We shall work for the new opportunities. But the Alliance must be ready to respond, whatever the future holds. Our guiding principles will be those to which the parties to the North Atlantic Treaty committed themselves thirty-three years ago.
When that Treaty was signed in Washington in 1949— the American Secretary of State, Dean Acheson, spoke of “the unity of belief, of spirit, and of interest, of the community of nations belonging to NATO” ; [end p2] — our Foreign Secretary, Ernest Bevin, said “At last democracy is no longer a series of isolated units. It has become a cohesive organism, determined to fulfil its great purpose” ; —and that great European, Paul-Henri Spaak, then Prime Minister of Belgium, described the Treaty as “an act of faith in the destiny of Western civilisation” . Their words, and the Treaty itself, have stood the test of time. The peace has been kept and freedom upheld for more than three decades. [end p3] And the fundamental principles of the Treaty remain our surest protection and guide for the future.
FREEDOM AND JUSTICE
The first pledge of the parties to the Treaty was to safeguard the “freedom, common heritage and civilisation of their peoples, founded on the principles of democracy, individual liberty and the rule of law” .
There is no greater cause—and none which requires such constant vigilance. Passive defence of freedom will not do. The struggle for human liberty is unremitting, the threat to it ever present. [end p4] Our commitment to freedom with justice must be-equal to the challenge. We have a double duty, to protect our own freedom and to maintain a beacon of hope for those men and women everywhere who desire freedom but who are denied it.
These are the values for which Britain, earlier this year, fought a bitter conflict in the South Atlantic. We had no doubt that we had to restore individual liberty and a democratic way of life to the Falkland Islanders, and to preserve the international law which the invaders had blatantly flouted. [end p5]
The attack on British territory was outside the area defined by the North Atlantic Treaty. The responsibility to react was ours and ours alone. But we received splendid support from our Allies —in their public declarations —in their cooperation over economic sanctions —in withholding arms supplies —and in other ways.
Britain will long remember that help and encouragement.
The fortunes of the Alliance are affected by developments outside the Treaty area. [end p6] Although the Alliance cannot act collectively outside that area, each of us must discharge his separate responsibilities. In doing so, each strengthens all. That was true of our own efforts in the South Atlantic. For if the NATO area is bounded by a line, the Atlantic is not. If we had not acted to repel aggression outside our area, the Alliance's resolve to act within it might well have been questioned. [end p7]
THE SOVIET THREAT
Mr. President, we are committed by the Treaty “to maintain and develop our individual and collective capacity to resist armed attack” .
The threat to the security of the West is as strong in 1982 as it was in 1949. The West is ready now, as it always has been, to respond to new opportunities for peace. But we require to be convinced that any new proposals and initiatives are based, not on calculations of short-term propaganda advantage but on a genuine willingness to increase the security of the peoples of the world. [end p8] We shall need more than paper declarations. It's performance that counts.
For in the period since our Treaty was signed the Soviet Union, has ruthlessly sacrificed the wellbeing of her people to the cost of armaments. She has moved to a position of parity with the United States in strategic nuclear weapons and massive superiority in intermediate-range nuclear weapons in Europe. In this year alone she has installed a further 132 SS20 warheads.
She have increased her superiority in conventional forces. [end p9]
She has displayed total disregard for human rights and international law in the repression of Hungary, Czechoslovakia and Afghanistan, and the implied threat to Poland. And she has continued to suppress personal liberty within her own borders.
During that period the peace has been kept in Europe only because the Alliance has remained true to its objectives and maintained an effective strategy of deterrence, both nuclear and conventional. [end p10]
The cost to our peoples has been high—but it is as nothing to the price we would have to pay if we were to put peace in peril by lowering our defences.
Once that happened it would take years to restore them, years during which we should be vulnerable to aggression and threats of aggression. Any government which took that risk would have failed signally in its duty to its own people and to the Alliance.
The Allies are committed to the goal of annual real increases in defence spending in the region of 3 per cent. [end p11] Britain intends to meet that commitment. It is no easier for us than for our partners. The conflict between the steep rise in the cost of defence equipment and other demands on the public purse is permanent. But the fact is that if we were to sacrifice defence to the needs of the Welfare State, the day might come when we should have neither peace nor freedom nor be able to provide our people with the schools, the hospitals, and all the other elements of a modern, civilised state. [end p12]
Arms Control
Mr. President, this Assembly will be discussing the prospects for arms control and disarmament. It is a subject which exercises the minds of all our peoples, and particularly the young. The fear of nuclear weapons and the enormous cost of modern defences have led to demands for unilateral measures of disarmament.
But the more we dislike nuclear weapons, and we all do, the more sense it makes to work for their reduction on both sides, not just on one. The thesis that one-sided disarmament by the West would reduce international tension is the great illusion of our time. [end p13] It would not. It would increase the danger of conflict. Aggressors are tempted by weakness. But they respect strength. If they see that strength will be maintained they may reject the path of aggression because its cost to them would be too great. Then they may seek genuinely to cooperate in negotiating disarmament. And that would make the world a safer place.
The desire for a reduction in armaments of all kinds and in East/West tension is not confined to the so-called peace movements. Everyone in this Assembly wants it. [end p14]
That is why the West has put forward a whole series of imaginative proposals.
The START talks are based on radical American proposals for the reduction of American and Soviet strategic weapons.
The dramatic proposal on intermediate nuclear forces—the so-called “zero option” —would, if accepted, remove the weapon which poses the greatest threat to Europe—the intermediate range land-based missiles. [end p15]
The less dramatic but important proposals for balanced troop reductions in Central Europe, and those put forward at Madrid for new confidence and security building measures all demonstrate our desire to achieve security at a lower level of armaments of all kinds.
There is no lack of proposals. But in the end it is not the weapons which cause war but the people who possess them. If they were ever encouraged to think that a threat would not be met by a firm response, that the will to defend our freedom were weakening, then the peace that has been kept in Europe for so long would truly be at risk. [end p16]
A UNITED WEST
Mr. President, in the period of uncertainty which lies ahead, the watchword of our Alliance must be “Unity of Purpose” . We are an association of free peoples. We debate our differences freely. We overcome them and we emerge the stronger.
Most of the disputes which recently clouded the relationship between Europe and America have been settled. The Western Alliance has again shown that it can rise above passing problems and match the larger needs of the times. [end p17] And we have done so because the ideals which brought our nations together in Washington in 1949 are as true and fresh today as they were then.
But since the Treaty was signed, a new generation has grown up. And those for whom the last great struggle is only an epic chapter in the human story do well to remember —that, down the ages, liberty has always been under threat —that peace with freedom and justice can never be taken for granted. [end p18]
The architects of the Alliance were men of true vision. They had a dream: That the civilisation we enjoy, founded on those human rights which neither state nor man should be able to set aside, should one day extend to all peoples and be handed on to all generations.
They knew that to accomplish these great things we must make our own defences sure and we must proclaim the virtues and values of liberty the world over.
Let us resolve today to do both.